After my partner came out as nonbinary a couple years ago, I felt even more confused and guilty about my conflicting desires to both lean into my own womanhood and flee from it. I knew my partner’s identity was its own independent, beautiful thing, something that was entirely their own. But I still wondered — as people around me whom I loved began to move away from the genders they’d been assigned — what I should be doing, if anything, about mine. But she needn’t have worried. Leila didn’t lose her friendship. The two agreed to draw a line under the embarrassing episode.

But when he looked at her quizzically, she says the full realisation of who she is hit her. I am a lesbian, Leila told herself. I settle for some Kelly Clarkson, and after my screechy but enthusiastic rendition of “Since U Been Gone,” five (!) different women approach me, complimenting my performance. One of them tells me her friend thinks I’m really cute, and could she buy me a drink? I took care of boys — like my partner, like the person I’d dated before them, even like my cis college boyfriend — because I loved them, and that’s what you do for the people you love. I think there was also a part of me that liked tempering my fastidious long-term planning, my conventionalism, my seriousness with their wild spirits, their rejection of every social expectation. Queer bois, with their embrace of pleasure above most all else, in their refusal to adhere to the rules of heteropatriarchal capitalism — why grow up if it means becoming a cog in the machine? — seemed to embody a radical queer ethos I admired, and maybe felt the slightest bit jealous of.In the early 90s, I went to an all-girls secondary school not far outside of London. At that time, one of the worst accusations you could receive from your so-called classmates was of being a ‘lezzzzzbian’. The word itself was always elongated, always said in a certain tone and always accompanied by a look of, at best, distain, at worst, disgust. It seemed like so many of the girls were determined to attach the ‘lesbian label’ to someone else as fast as possible, so that they wouldn’t be ‘lumbered’ with it themselves. Buoyed by what she found, Nella began connecting with women online. Women like her. Women who soon became her closest friends. That night, Matie and Jamie convinced me (against my natural inclination to avoid live entertainment) to go to the evening’s scheduled attraction, a comedy set by Elvira Kurt. Before Elvira performed we were welcomed by Tisha, Olivia’s VP and our cruise director, who greeted the “ladies of Olivia” and announced a few of the events coming up over the next few days, including a meetup for the “Older, Wiser Lesbians,” or “OWLs.” (“Date me, OWLs!” Matie whisper-yelled next to me.) When we boarded, Dana introduced me to the adorable boomer-millennial pair in charge of Olivia’s Solos Program, which caters to women (single or partnered) who decide to go on trips alone. I got my own Solos dog tag and a pink Olivia bracelet to signify my newbie status.

What I didn’t expect was everything else that would happen to me — and is still happening to me — thanks to this one little week in my otherwise pleasantly uneventful life. Leila had grown up in a loving, supportive middle-class family in Bujumbura city. She was popular. She had a boyfriend.At the same time as I struggled with my sexuality as a teenager, I was also finding my home in the camaraderie and friendship of team sport. I had a safe environment where I could express myself physically and support my friends in a common goal. Stealth tax to ensnare millions of pensioners: Full state pension to rise above income tax threshold in coming years due to freeze on allowances For the last stretch of our afternoon, we were dropped on a secluded beach at Nevis, where a few of us ferried beers and our new favorite drink, the very college-esque Panty Ripper (coconut rum and pineapple juice), from shore to the rest of the women waiting in the water. One woman stuffed a bunch of beers into her bathing suit and we cheered whenever anybody pulled one out. A couple women had GoPro cameras, with which we took a lot of increasingly drunken group shots while we swam. One of them was attached to a floating handle that looked very much like a big yellow dildo, which, once somebody pointed it out, kept sending us into hysterics. Mum cried. I cried. We convinced ourselves it was a phase. She asked me to make an effort to be be ‘normal’. I said I would.”

The BBC messaged Niya to tell her that we would be using images of a violet to illustrate the memes. We chose the symbol - which differs vastly from the symbols the women use - because lesbian women in the 1900s were said to give violets to their girlfriends. The first time I thought that Olivia might actually stand a chance at survival was Sunday, the first full day of the cruise, when I attended the welcome mixer for “Generation O,” which is how Olivia refers to its precious few millennial and Generation X clientele. As I walked around the ship, which holds over 2,000 passengers, it was already clear that the average woman here was a couple decades older than me. But it turned out that there were a few other twenty- and thirtysomethings who’d managed to find their way to Olivia.

Get the Video RSS feed

When her parents died, Nella's brothers increased the pressure. There was no money for an education, they said, and besides they didn't believe a woman needed one. I planned to meet Dana in the ship lobby that morning so that we could wander around for a while before the event. When we set off into town together, she gently informed me that my whatever-it-was with Lynette had not gone unnoticed by the staff, who’d encouraged Dana to encourage me to spend more time speaking with other people and reporting on the ship’s endless entertainment options.

Many members of the group say they have experienced violence at the hands of family members who became suspicious about their sexuality. Nella is now divorced but others in the group remain married. Their husbands are not aware of their sexuality. Throughout the trip, Matie and Jamie would have a number of tearful conversations about trans inclusion with some older passengers who refused to accept trans women as their fellow sisters. But they also got many women to reconsider their more middle-of-the-road views on trans inclusion. “Those are the people who matter,” Jamie would later tell me, recalling her latest conversions over coffee in the cafeteria.I would move into a house with some friends in Brooklyn, where a room had just magically opened up. There’d be a dog, and a yard. It would feel like a sign. (I’d start getting really into signs.) At 22, she met a woman who was also in her early 20s, through mutual friends. Bonding over their love of music, they formed a fast friendship. PROFESSOR DOUG STOKES: Yes, Hamas imperils our values. But smug celebrities and the virtue-signalling Left are the biggest threat to Western civilisation